Fall Sun Outages
Sun Outages Begin Weekend of 10/1/16
Hood Canal Communications’ cable TV customers experience what are known as “sun outages” twice a year- in the fall (September/October) and in the spring (February/March). In both the spring and the fall, the sun passes behind certain communications satellites once per day. During this time when both the sun and the satellite are in the ground station’s field of view, the energy from the sun will overpower the signal from the satellite, thus causing loss of signal, tiling and no reception at all on some of our channels.
Several cable channels are received from the satellites that will be affected. Each sun outage cycle can last up to 2-3 weeks. During a sun outage channels go black for a brief period of time. Initially for the first few and the last few days the outages will be gradual and slight. When they reach their peak, mid-cycle, the black outs will last upwards of 15 minutes.
Also Preferred Cable subscribers may see severe tiling at first and eventually the “One moment please, this channel will be available shortly” message or “no signal”. We apologize for the inconvenience of these bi-annual occurrences that are beyond our control. All cable TV and satellite TV providers are affected by this.